Max is taking 4K away from its legacy ad-free subscribers | Hacker News Reader

Max is taking 4K away from its legacy ad-free subscribers

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102 pointsroody15119 comments

Baffles me why all these streaming companies are shooting themselves in the foot. For about 18 months there was a golden age where it was easier to pay for things than to pirate. Now we’re in a situation where it’s even /harder/ than it’s ever been.

People will pay for media if it’s easy and a good experience. The barrier to piracy is non-existent these days and you actually get a far better experience.

For HBO/Max's foot-shooting specifically, David Zaslav is why.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/can-...

Imagine being the person who took a rock solid brand like HBO and flushed it down the toilet…

There was another really good New Yorker piece recently about Howard Schultz (the Starbucks CEO responsible for elevating the company into the juggernaut chain it is today) and his insistence on rolling out these Oleato drinks that are literally just coffee with olive oil drizzled in.

Granted, I don't think Oleato is enough to kill Starbucks, but my takeaway of the whole thing was that sometimes these C-suite guys end up in positions where everyone around them is too afraid to say "what the fuck are you doing."

I don't know anything about Oleato, but some people swear by the coffee+MCT oil (bulletproof coffee) combo. I see several brands at Whole Foods that are basically this (Super Coffee and others). Oleato doesn't sound too far off from that, and looking it up, it looks intriguing.

But reading more about it, seems they put way too much oil in the coffee. Super Coffee has 3 grams of MCT oil, I'm seeing Oleato with 34 grams of oil reported in a Grande.

Trouble here is that “Some people” isn’t the public for Starbucks, they have to cater for a wide swath of the population for them to make sense as a business the way they have shops all over the place.

So trying to convince people to drink something bitter adding something else that is also bitter, like olive oil, is something only someone completely disconnected from reality would do. The super rich are definitely lost to the rest of the world.

What a better way to give your customers the shits than to drizzle oil in coffee.

Coffee + oil + magnesium citrate + sennosides = Maximizing spatial awareness in record time.

I've loved the Oleato drinks that I've had, although they are very caloric

Oleato? Is that pronounced like “Aviato”?

Afaik they were or are planning to add a bunch of low quality content to Max from Discovery or something like that and didn't want to destroy HBO's reputation. Not sure though

> "One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue"

Gabe Newell of Valve, Oct 2011

[1] https://www.gamesradar.com/gabe-newell-piracy-issue-service-...

I struggle to understand how services like Netflix or Max have an issue with providing service. How could they possibly make it easier to access their content with various apps?

The issue is that Neflix, Max and the others are a bridge between you and the content you want to watch. When this content starts to shift around and things that were available in one place now are in another, consuming content becomes problematic.

In addition to that, prices are going up while overall catalogue size seems to be going down (at least the catalogue of quality content)

On top of that you have an increasing tendency of just canceling things left and right because the ROI from the companies perspective is not as high as they were hoping and so fuck the people who were invested in that TV series.

The end result is that the entire streaming landscape is a mess, everything is becoming more expensive and you get no real benefit in return and at a certain point, if I want to watch TV series X or Movie Y my best bet is to just pirate the damn thing and call it a day.

MAX, YouTube Premium, Spotify, Netflix, Disney+ can all be had for about $100/mo. Even assuming someone only makes $20/hour, that's about 15 minutes of work per day for a month to access effectively unlimited content. If you can't find what you want to watch there, swap providers or just buy the content on Apple TV/Google Play/etc.

Again, I struggle to see how these platforms don't provide massive value. Like that's one meal out any more for a family of four. Pirating content when it's so cheap seems entitled to me, like not tipping when you go out to eat (in the US) because you have personal issues with tipping.

100/month can be A LOT depending on where you live.

Only referring to the US here as I’m not sure of pricing in the hundreds of other countries out there.

You said that you struggle to see how these platforms don't provide massive value which is fair from your point of view but I personally struggle to see how any of the platforms provide 5€/month worth of value, let alone 10 or 20.

I guess it's a matter of perspective and what do we find valuable in life.

As for tipping, that's a can of worms I'm not going to open because as a european I find the whole concept insane.

You struggle to see how Netflix provides five Euros a month in value. I… ok.

Yes. There’s Netflix set up on the tv at my home. I don’t pay for it and I watched < 10 hours of content in the last 3 years.

That’s definitely not worth 5€/month for me.

Not saying it’s not worth it for everyone, just saying the value streaming services provide is not all that absolute.

People want the same for TV shows and movies that they already have with music. They want a spotify like experience but with movies. One subscription where they can access everything they want. This is how you could make it easier.

I am not saying it is realistic as the hosting and production costs are just not the same. And exclusives are a standard way to attract subscribers.

If I remember correctly as well while music has consolidated, the revenue artists get from it is much lower than what they used to get with the old model. I can see why that does not really motivate the industry to provide a more convenient solution. Spotify showed them that it might hurt their bottom line so why would they go that route.

These copyright owners always defeat themselves. Netflix used to have a rich selection of content. Now every single studio has its own shitty streaming service instead. You subscribe to one of these things and you find they have like 5 films you like. You watch one of these things and you find they compressed the "high definition" stream so much it has artifacts in 90% black frames.

Meanwhile "pirates" have everything humanity ever created in Blu-Ray quality all in one place and thoroughly catalogued. Makes me feel like a sucker.

My lifetime Plex pass I bought a few years ago is paying off in spades.

Netflix used to have a rich selection of content because content creators licensed it to Netflix without realizing how streaming was going to eat into physical media sales.

$15 Netflix wasn't going to replace a $75 cable TV package, $30 for a couple premium channels, and a $10-15/week Blockbuster habit (around $150/mo) over the long term. Once studios realized that licensing their content to Netflix was cannibalizing their revenue from other sources, they weren't going to decide they didn't actually want revenue.

$150/mo buys you way better entertainment today than it used to. If you remember the 90s, you should remember the absolute dearth of content to the point that you'd end up watching infomercials - we'd watch commercials as entertainment because there was nothing better. Yea, the current situation definitely isn't perfect and it sucks any time companies are trying to grab more of your cash. I mean, $73.50 buys you Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Max, Paramount+ and Showtime all without ads and with way more and better content than a cable package offered in the 90s or 2000s. Plus, it's easy enough to sign up for one, watch a bunch of its content for a month and then jump to another service (paying for only one or two at a time).

It was unrealistic to believe that we'd have one extremely cheap service that everyone would license their content to over the long run.

For those born in the late 90s, you wouldn't remember the absolute garbage that was entertainment before the mid/late 2000s. It isn't perfect today, but there's so much to watch at your fingertips in a way that there just wasn't back then. If it was 11pm, there was just nothing on TV and if you didn't have a DVD you were just out of luck.

Being realistic, the copyright holders would have "defeated themselves" if they continued licensing content at low rates when they realized that streaming was cannibalizing other revenue streams. What we're experiencing sucks - it was better when Netflix had a richer selection and things were cheaper. No one likes companies getting more money out of them - especially when we had better years before they realized we were all moving to streaming. However, it was bound to happen. The alternative would be them seeing their revenue drop to an incredibly low level.

It's not that baffling. For a time, they were trying to grow their subscriber base and luring them in with low prices. Now that they have their subscriber base, they want to get back to the revenue they were getting before. Realistically, entertainment companies weren't going to accept lower revenue than they previously had for their product. As the industry transitions from physical media and cable TV to streaming, they needed to get users over the hump of signing up.

It isn't harder to pay than to pirate. It's just getting more expensive. Max's move to charge $4 extra for 4K doesn't make it harder to pay. You say that people will pay for media if it's easy and a good experience. C'mon, Max isn't changing the ease or experience. They're just changing the price.

We got used to paying less for entertainment and now we're all annoyed that they're trying to get us back to paying what we used to pay 20 years ago.

I'm not suggesting that cost isn't an important factor. It is. But an argument many people made was "I'd pay for it if they'd just make it available." Turns out, we don't like the price. Tons of people with cable used to pay $15/mo for HBO. Max has more content and is more convenient than what HBO offered 15-20 years ago.

It's really not baffling and they aren't making it harder. They want more money and we don't want to pay as much. I'm not saying that it doesn't make the price hikes garbage. It's just not baffling: they want to get back the revenue they're losing in declining physical media sales and declining cable TV subscription rates.

> It isn't harder to pay than to pirate. It's just getting more expensive.

No, it's harder too. Shows I want to watch bounce between the various silos of un-indexed content, without notice, as licenses shift and expire. Each silo behind their own separate paywalls. New ones pop up and shut down. Their feature matrix changes. They introduce geo restrictions, device restrictions, they force you to sign in from your 'home location' every few weeks to keep features like live TV running. Of course they'll charge you even if you don't, because you've been traveling for a while, in a geo where you can't even access the content you're paying for in the first place.

I don't care about the money, within reason. I care about being able to sit down and watch the show I want, in 4K, with Dolby whatever whatever. Without having to think about it. I'm trying to relax here dammit, lol.

This isn't about Max wanting a few extra dollars, it's just a price hike. We'd whine if they moved the price point up in the same way we're whining they kept the price the same but de-contented it. That's not the part that sucks.

Chasing down which of the 11 streaming services has the TV show you want to watch on a Mario-esque "the princess is in another castle" adventure sucks. When you find it, being greeted with a message saying that you've changed IP address too many times this year so better luck next year sucks. Then trying to figure out why it looks like it was filmed with a potato because you missed the email saying unless you act now and pay more, you're only getting 480p - sucks.

I only recently got into this pirating thing. I was completely willing to have a Netflix subscription, and Amazon Prime, and HBO/Max. Now I feel like I am being milked. So screw it, I literally spent money on some stream pirating software, going hog wild. I have JustWatch and spreadsheets. My targets are listed and I knock them down. Sure, I'll do your service for a whole month, during which I will slurp down the TV shows (anywhere from two to twenty) I want for myself, my mother, and some friends. Then move on to the next. If I do my homework beforehand, that week-long free trial is all I need most of the time. Track movies that are coming on whatever service that month, grab what I can get. I'll manage all of that later. Tubi, despite the low-res films, is the great equalizer, but Roku and Freevee don't hurt either.

I would have been fat, dumb, and happy at a hundred bucks a month but they can't resist The Squeeze. We're dropping the resolution. We're limiting the number of simultaneous screens. We're tightening out catalog. We're putting out Originals, locked to us, instead of your old favorites. Just another two bucks a month. We're introducing ads into your tier. Any and every kind of shrinkflation, with a service almost like you're used to just another few bucks a month away. They can't help it, they just see it as leaving money on the table if they can't tighten the coils just a little bit every year.

"Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."

That sounds more expensive than just paying money for content.

It's even more striking in comparison to music, where with a subscription to either Apple Music or Spotify you've covered pretty much the entire 'current mass-market music' ecosystem.

Something Apple Music tried to change by dumping money into exclusive deals. Which luckily failed.

I think the core difference is upfront capital investment required between music and TV/Film content. Which leads to different incentives and effects down the line.

One of my most common google searches is "what service is ____ on" because I never know where the hell to find anything.

I find justwatch to be reliable. Sometimes I even find something new to watch on there too.

This is something that JustWatch is useful for.

> It isn't harder to pay than to pirate.

lmao, you've obviously never watched anyone over 50 try and use streaming services in 2023.

If I had a one use time machine, fuck killing Hitler, I'm using it to go to the day I taught my parents about Netflix.

People over 50 invented Netflix, dude. Try harder.

Used to pay 20 years ago, during an era of cable TV monopolies and resultant sky-high pricing.

Netflix refuses to serve me HDR/4K content unless I jump through a series of hoops and use the correct browser, OS and whatever else I'd have needed to do. Now I just refuse to pay for it, especially given how easy it is for me to just pirate quality content.

I have no problem paying Floatplane for LinusTechTips content, because they just provide the high quality content, where I can even just download the VODs easily. I'm tired of corporations fucking me at every angle when possible...

What hoops?

Netflix 4k was intended for people using large expensive TV screens. All other uses are secondary to the designers of the system.

As for people using computers to watch 4k, Netflix supports the most popular configuration types. If you choose an unusual configuration then it’s simply not a supported thing.

It’s not like it’s bait and switch.

IIRC I needed to use Microsoft Edge, and some codec from the Windows Store. Then I HAD to use HDMI (all my monitors are display port). There was something else too probably

Point is, if I can't just use my Firefox browser on Linux to get high quality content for money that I will happily pay, I'll just go get it for free.

Today it absolutely is harder to pay than to pirate.

It was easy when everything noteworthy was on Netflix. You payed for Netflix and got easy access directly on your TV to most trending content. This was more convenient than piracy.

Now the landscape is balkanaized and no one subscribes to all streaming platforms. You can never predict if something of interest will be present on the platform you subscribe to. Do you then subscribe to another service? Now you have to remember to unsubscribe. Do you rotate services and binge watch? Now you are not up to date and risk hearing/reading spoilers. This is less convenient than piracy.

I mean I pay the $20 or whatever for a whole season of a given show on Prime Video, you don't need to subscribe to a streaming service.

This is not really true. In the past, old stuff which already went into syndication was on Netflix. New stuff was on TV and only TV.

TV shows produced by HBO never made it to Netflix. Disney kept all their most popular movies to themselves. Blockbuster releases were only available on DVD.

Now all these things are available on streaming but just on different platforms.

We have the paradox of choice here, where more choices feel like a worse deal. In the past there was only Netflix, so you would choose streaming and voluntarily give up all the other content not on streaming.

I took the "harder to pay" comment as "harder to justify" for families balancing rising costs on all fronts. For the one or two shows mom or dad have time to watch after the kids go to bed, piracy is still a convenient option to consider. Perhaps pay for Disney+ for the kids, and consolidate every other streaming service into automated piracy on a low-cost media server

its ironic that the best anti-piracy feature the "content industry" has going for them wasn't even developed by them, just the simple PITA of self hosting. From setting up a VPN, to finding torrents, to using a NAS, to setting up plex/jellyfin, to having codec issues on players, to annoying subtitles/dubs, to shitty interfaces on some protocols (dlna comes to mind), to difficulty in ripping blu-ray/DVD, I can see how an average (non-techie) family doesn't want to mess around with this shit and just pay for the content.

> The barrier to piracy is non-existent these days and you actually get a far better experience

I hadn’t used a torrent in a decade and revisited the concept due to this streaming service convulsion

I found that:

VPN to another country was a 1-click in a chrome extension I already had that for other reasons, and all the torrent sites remind you to enable it or install one thats just as simple

My TV was running a DLNA server on my network with a lot of storage space I never knew about. I had only connected it to the internet for an OTA update once, and never used any of the “Smart TV” stuff. But it also has USB ports.

It runs the latest video formats and can read subtitles packaged with them

The torrent downloaded directly to it at gigabit speed over my Wifi 6 network the ISP had already setup with their gear

The quality is far higher than what gets streamed over the internet. Something I was willing to overlook as long as the streaming services were more convenient.

I think a lot of people have similar infrastructure already right now, without needing to be an enthusiast in electronics or home entertainment

really is better at the moment

Not if your main devices are a smartphone and a smart TV, maybe a gaming console or a TV stick, which is the case for most people these days. Outside of the tech bubble, many people barely ever use a computer, especially outside of work.

I've often pondered the idea of a pirating site that lets you donate to specific individuals/teams of the production. For example, if you particularly liked the movie's animation but hated the writing, your donation would be sent to the animators. Basically a cinema meritocracy.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but this sounds legally problematic. Maybe even for the receiving party as they may be violating their contract by accepting the money.

Same. I was thinking about this in terms of rewarding music artists.

We could have invented PayPal!

I cannot for the life of me understand the rebrand. This has got to be some idiot exec who just wanted to put their stamp on things.

One of those decisions that isn’t for the benefit of customers or shareholders—just the exec.

I think that the point of the rebrand was to eliminate the expectation that HBO shows would be available on HBO Max. For example, Westworld is no longer available on Max.

It was supposedly more related to the fact that they’re now also streaming tons of non-HBO content, and so they didn’t want to dilute the perception of quality of the HBO brand by having all that junk under the “HBO” app.

That's probably at least part of the official internal logic, but I can't help read that as 'removing a selling point for our service'. Even if shows were to disappear or rotate out, a la the Disney vault, why advertise it?

It feels like a lesser version of Netflix rebranding so they can spin off 'netflix originals' to other services. Losing recognition and good will to ???.

Besides, if they aren't going to hoard and leverage their portfolio to drive subscribers to their platform why are they even playing at being a streaming service?

I think that’s the rationalization, but the point of the rebrand is David Zaslav pissing on things to mark his territory.

Why would HBO shows not be available on HBO's own platform? Makes no sense whatsoever.

Often it can be more profitable to license out shows to other services, if the show isn’t doing well enough to warrant keeping on your own.

Disney does this as well, and Netflix will do this regionally.

Probably trying to save money on residuals or some sort of licensing (music perhaps).

They should have called it HBO Min.

Closer to reality.

"HBO Max" was the original "rename" for the streaming service. It is now, they insist, just "Max".

Mergers allow concentration of power while antitrust regulators are nowhere to be found. Blithe unconcern about enshitification of goods and services but for more money equals higher profits. Consumers are dumb and will keep giving us more money whenever we ask for any excuse. is the mantra.

Just linked this in reply to another comment, but the idiot exec in question in named David Zaslav. The alleged rebrand is because Max "mixes premium HBO content with some of Discovery’s more down-market shows."

https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/can-...

I can't believe Marketing didn't raise a huge fuss; the other day I wanted to look up pricing and some other information about the service, and it's exactly as hard as you might imagine to google for a service named "Max".

Who is Max? I really hate what HBO did here. I was very much liking the HBO Max era, and very much unimpressed with all of what’s happening now.

Dilution of a good brand to pretend a hot load is something people want.

The rebranding of HBO Max to "Max" might be one of the stupidest rebrandings I've ever seen. And that's saying a lot, because I've never seen a good one to begin with. I can't fathom what led to that decision. They had a service which people liked, and was named after a channel which was synonymous with "quality TV". So they decided to throw that away, in favor of the most generic name to grace the world (until Elon tried to one up them with "X")? Really? Were they sniffing markers in the HBO board room or something?

Also, they chose to inconvenience the entire user base by forcing them to download another app and sign in over there.

And somehow it wasn't just a rebranded version of the same app. It was like a beta version of a brand new codebase.

I see your "Max" and raise you a "SyFy." And then putting wrestling on.

HBO Max to Max is the stupidest rebranding in terms of quality change. Twitter to X is the stupidest rebranding in terms of market valuation.

> I really hate what HBO did here.

“HBO”, inasmuch as that names something that can be said to act or be acted on, was more the recipient than the active party. Its what the acquiring corporate parent did to HBO.

It was that or "Dr. Pimple Popper", "Gypsy Sisters", "Hoarding: Buried Alive", and "Expedition Bigfoot" all became HBO shows.

If you try to cancel, they will offer you 3 months for 7.99. I'm going to take that deal and then cancel after 3 more months. I'm also cancelling Netflix this month. There's nothing that I can't bittorrent or borrow one of my friend's accounts for one-off viewing.

You know what hasn't taken away my 4k access? The pirate bay.

What is the point of these aritificial tiers and gating 4k? The marginal cost to go from 1080p to 4k is insignificant unless there are underlying licensing deals hbo can't get out of.

Agreed. 4k and Atmos is why I had Max. I immediately canceled when I got this email. No reason it couldn’t have been kept for legacy accounts.

It’s really not that hard to follow from a product perspective. 4K is better, therefore it has more value that people would be willing to pay for.

The price of things (especially virtual goods) rarely has any relation to “marginal cost” to produce or distribute it. It only matters what people are willing to pay.

I mean you answered it yourself. They have a product that is basically marginally free to produce, but that customers do seem to assign a marginal value to. Of course you'd try to charge for it.

I immediately canceled my subscription when I got that email. Easy decision since HBO doesn't even have any new content being released these days. Plus the idiotic rebrand to "Max" forced me to download an entirely new app and burned whatever goodwill I had towards HBO as a brand. David Zaslav is a totally incompetent moron.

"Legacy" marketing wank. I signed up last year.

They want 33% more ($150 -> $200) for absolute no value at all.

A greedy profit-price spiral cash-grab is what it is.

Canceling the day before the renewal and back to torrents I guess. https://auth.max.com/cancel-subscription

I haven't done it in over a decade. Is the bay still the way it's mostly done by casuals?

TPB's pretty rough/risky these days. For better alternatives, you can find megathreads on Reddit with vetted sources. Have yet to encounter any issues.

There are a few non-registration sites which are better than the Bay. I do not see many 4k torrents on any of them.

TPB is hot garbage these days. I really recommend doing some research and finding some better sites.

I ended up just buying a private tracker account on some shady third party site, was well worth it. YMMV.

Nah, don’t use TPB, moderation is lax and selection is meh. On the public side, these days it’s all 1337, TG, maybe RuT. They’re all fairly well moderated and have good selections, even if some stuff has just the one guy seeding from his dialup in the middle on the ocean.

Prowlarr. Just fire up the docker container and go. Self-hosted meta search, has a list of most tracker search sites you might want. Search all of them at once. Bring your ad blocker :-)

Stick the results in Jellyfin if you want a Netflix-like experience. It’s great. Watching something in Infuse on an AppleTV through my Jellyfin right now.

Y'all would be shocked if you knew how many new and upcoming blockbuster movies are mastered at 2K even though you can buy them in 4K or watch them in IMAX.

Yeah, it's pretty sleazy that movies were shot on 2K Alexa and then upscaled to 4K. If your movie isn't 4K, just let it be what it is. Don't sell me a 4K Blu-ray with upscaled content.

My AT&T internet package still “Includes Max” with no monetary value assigned to the “ad-free monthly” subscription, but new service with the same speed (without Max) is $5 cheaper monthly. Max’s subscription settings defer to AT&T, which doesn’t offer a choice. None of the internet packages include Max anymore. I suspect I will have the opportunity to stop subsidizing their reality TV outlet soon.

Nothing better for user retention than stripping away a perk from the userbase that gave them their money early on.

I guess they made the calculation that this will save them more money than the loss of subscriptions this may incur.

welcome to the warner family, bro

It's even better, they notified via email, explicitly stating that the price was not increasing, yet they removed 4k, so to get the same thing you have to pay more. Than sounds like a price increase to me.

Everyone is trying as hard as they can to squeeze the consumer with higher and higher subscription revenues. This won't end well.

More reason to make sure to watch everything within a month and then unsubscribe for another 9-12 months. With Succession over I'm not even sure what I should subscribe for. I like How To With John Wilson, but am not paying this kind of money for that show alone.

Heh, my wife and I were just talking about cancelling due to not using it enough to be worth paying for. Netflix too. Don't really care about 4K as such, as we don't have a 4K tv. But still, basically raising the price to get the same service is a dick move.

At this rate I’ll need to dig out my old sonarr setup.

The streaming companies are pricing themselves into oblivion

Streaming companies promoting stuff so hard only to realize that data is expensive.

Add (HBO) to the title?

Nope, they dropped the "HBO" in a very ill advised rebrand

Who here actually has and uses a 4K device? I still haven't gone higher than 1440p, and even on that, I don't mind if my content is 1080p. I rarely even notice.

(I also hate >60 FPS, for what it's worth.)

I have a 4k TV with Max. I am not sure I can clock the difference.

You may have a quite small TV, or seat quite far from it, or need to get your sight checked. Perhaps it’s time to wear glasses or changes your glasses.

I used to not care about 4K but after I got my eyes sight fixed, 4K against fullHD is quite easy to distinguish. I’m not sure it’s worth the price bump though.

No, yes(ish) and maybe.

75" TV. Big living room, middle age.

Most modern tvs are 4k these days and 1080p vs 4k is very visible in these

The only TV I use is a 32'' Vizio from about ten years ago. I guess I'm just not the target audience.

Not at the shitty bitrates we're getting in the USA.

Plenty of people have 4k screens on their computers. Even my laptop has one and it wasn't super expensive. I wouldn't go back below 4k for working, but I don't really care much for it when watching movies.

I have a big-ass 4k projector screen. The space I have it in is a little cramped, so the front row has the viewer’s eyeballs only about 5’ from it.

Truly? The difference between a really good 1080p source and a 4k source isn’t that large. I kinda worried when I got it that it’d ruin 1080p for me and I’d start running out of disk space from all the 4k, but no, not at all. I go 4k for special movies where I care about that little extra bit of quality, but really, it’s not like good 1080p looks obviously pixelated or anything. It’s totally fine. Still feels like being at the movies. 720p’s dodgy, especially from the front row, but even that’s not as awful as I expected it to be. Though you can definitely tell.

Does anyone care about 4k? Ive been using either 720 or 1080p for years and never had an issue

Some do, yeah. I have a friend who is real upset about the change, for instance. But I get you - I don't even have a device with 4k resolution, and I am perfectly content.

I bought a 4k TV and I've been enjoying 4k content on it. I was annoyed enough by this change to cancel my account.

I don't particularly care either. These streaming services will compress the video pretty horribly anyway. I saw lagging artifacts in a panning shot once and I started wondering why I pay these people.

The Dolby Atmos/Vision standards also provide HDR, dynamic brightness, and surround sound. People spend thousands of dollars on home theater setups to meet those standards. Max has almost completely stopped producing cinematic content, so I can’t imagine the upsell making much sense.

If you are spending thousands of dollars on a home theater, surely streaming was a no go from the start? Blueray is the only available option which has a chance of delivering the optimal experience.

A lot of people, myself included, are fine with “less than optimal”. Sure, I’d prefer a blu-ray for my favorite epics, but a great home theater system also makes streaming content a satisfying and convenient experience. There’s also a lot of content one wants to watch that never makes it to blu-ray

Blu-ray is not raw, it is just HEVC with a higher bitrate. Most content encoded at a high profile level is not even going to hit the bitrate limit of a good streaming service + connection. Other than pausing during an action scene to take a still, I can’t perceive the difference.

I had a 30" sony wega from 2001. I didn't care about 4k. It finally died and now I have a 65" sony Xsomething. Now I care about 4k.

On a good TV, 4k really is impressive.

From what source? Nothing streaming at typical cable bitrates is worthy of being called "UHD," let alone "4K."

The on-device TV demos and Sony's 'core' 4k streaming service

>Nothing streaming at typical cable bitrates is worthy of being called "UHD," let alone "4K."

I agree! However, by that same token, 1080p streams aren't really 1080p. A not-actually-4k stream still looks dramatically better than a not-actually-1080p stream.

At the same bitrate?

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